Friday, September 26, 2008
Another blockbuster?
Mark Taylor
Mark Taylor's Outdoors column and notebook appears regularly in The Roanoke Times.
Recent columns
What will Virginia deer hunters do for an encore after last year's record kill of nearly a quarter million whitetails?
Don't be surprised if they come close to that benchmark again, or even top it.
When the primary deer seasons get going on Oct. 4 with the archery opener, longer seasons and ever more liberal bag limits combined with a robust whitetail population across most of the state should set the tone for another banner year for hunters.
Muzzleloader season expands
Among the regulations changes approved during the off-season, none are more significant in Western Virginia than the expansion of the early muzzleloader season to two weeks west of the Blue Ridge Range.
It's a change many hunters in the western half of the state have been seeking for more than a decade, and brings the western season in line with the season east of the Blue Ridge.
The season opens Nov. 1 and runs through Nov. 14. The general firearms season, which is two weeks long in most western counties, opens Nov. 15.
This isn't the first time the early season has been two weeks long in the western half of the state. In the early 1990s, at the beginning of the boom in popularity of muzzleloader hunting in Virginia, the season was two weeks long statewide in muzzleloading counties.
But a number of Western Virginians who hunted only the general firearms season complained that muzzleloader hunters were being given an unfair advantage. The board of the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries agreed and cut the western season to one week. The department also implemented a limit of a single antlered buck per hunter during the one-week season.
The changes along the way have been shaped primarily by what the majority of hunters want, said Matt Knox, a deer program manager with the DGIF.
"It's not a biological issue," Knox said. "It's a public opinion issue."
Resistance from general firearms hunters has since eased. Virginia now has about 120,000 muzzleloader hunters, many of them in western counties. Knox said roughly 70 percent of deer hunters west of the Blue Ridge now muzzleloader hunt.
"Things have changed, and changed dramatically," Knox said of the dynamics of the deer hunting community.
Knox said he supported expanding the season, which he said likely won't lead to a major jump in the deer kill.
"The average hunter has only X days to hunt," he said. "If you give him one week, he'll hunt X days in one week. If you give him two weeks, he'll hunt X days in two weeks."
The change is about convenience. With more available days, hunters will be able to focus their efforts on days when conditions are more favorable.
"Anything that makes it more convenient for the hunter," Knox said, "I'm all for."
One thing that won't be convenient for some hunters is the single-buck rule, which remains in place for the early muzzleloader season in the west.
The expansion to two weeks was a last-minute proposal brought forward by the agency's board in response to citizen requests. But the proposal didn't address the single-buck rule, and it was not legally possible to make the change once the proposal went out for public comment.
Contributing to the angst over the single-buck limit is that in most western counties, there is only one either-sex hunting day -- Monday, Nov. 10 -- during the early muzzleloader season.
The stipulation will force some hunters to quit after Nov. 10 as soon as they kill a buck. (Hunters could go back to bowhunting.)
Knox said the agency plans to address the one-buck rule while reviewing regulations after the season.
Other changes
Hunters in a few deer-rich counties in the Roanoke region face an added incentive for killing antlerless deer this season.
A new earn-a-buck (EAB) rule in place in Bedford, Franklin, Patrick and Roanoke counties will require hunters to kill an antlerless deer in one of those counties before being allowed to kill a second buck in an EAB county, even if the first buck was killed in a non-EAB county.
A relatively low number of hunters kill more than one buck a year. Still, the rule has prompted many hunters to pledge to kill the first antlerless deer they can to "pre-qualify" for two bucks, just in case.
Interestingly, the number of either-sex "doe days" during general firearms season has actually been reduced west of the Blue Ridge and on public land in some eastern counties.
The changes are primarily designed to eliminate a county-by-county patchwork of days that was confusing to hunters and an enforcement challenge for conservation police officers.
Overall hunting prospects
With generally strong deer populations and long seasons, most hunters should be able to fill at least one tag pretty easily, especially in counties with liberal antlerless deer regulations.
Prospects of seeing good numbers of deer are better for hunters who have access to private land, which generally supports much higher concentrations of whitetails than public tracts. Public land will produce some trophies for hunters willing to work to get away from the crowds.
The mast crop will play a big role in the location of deer in the coming season. Acorn-laden white oaks are traditional hot spots in the early archery season, with productive red oaks become more important later in the fall.
The DGIF annually prepares mast reports, but the information is not yet fully tabulated. Early indications are that mast is spotty, with great crops in some areas and meager crops elsewhere.
